I can quite happily say that I’ve never, ever considered entering a beauty contest.Why would I?

I can quite happily say that I’ve never, ever considered entering a beauty contest.Why would I? I’m short, curvy in the wrong places and most certainly not gorgeous enough to prance around in a swimsuit.

And though there maybe a plethora of different beauty pageants around these days, they are certainly not like they used to be.

In fact, I can’t actually believe they were ever like they were but watching Wonderland: I Was Once A Beauty Queen (BBC Two Wales, Monday, 9pm) I had to keep pinching myself that this is what life used to be like.

Back in the ’70s and ’80s, beauty contests were big business in Britain, attracting millions of TV viewers and making the winners famous.

As well as a crown, bouquet and the chance to sob mascara down their perfectly made-up faces, the winners were given a chance of stardom and many went on to snare celebrity boyfriends.

This was a fascinating and nostalgic look back at some of the women who were successful in such events and, because the footage was so dated now, proved to be quite hilarious.

Watching men being spoon-fed foie gras and brandy as ladies pranced around a stage in high heels and swimwear was seriously weird but the women who talked about their lives as beauty queens just took it in their stride. First to tell her tale was Tracy Dodds (pictured). Crowned Miss Great Britain 1982, she had to hand in her crown just three days into her reign when it came out that she’d posed for topless photos taken just prior to the competition.

She settled in Australia with her businessman husband only to be dumped for a younger woman when she reached the pensionable age of 38. Ouch!

So she moved back home, got a first class honours degree in teaching and now helps her very beautiful daughter India.

No, not with reading or maths but entering beauty contests of course.

We also met Della Dolan, Miss United Kingdom 1982, who showed brains as well as beauty.

When she dumped her boyfriend Craig Druper (who she then went on to marry years later) to go off with Manchester United goalkeeper Gary Bailey (who she didn’t) after winning the title, she bought the clothing business off him and did very well for herself.

These days she and Craig and their two daughters live a life of luxury in Switzerland.

Most kids these days would prefer to go down the student route than the beauty pageant one, and you could hardly blame them if they were inspired by the rather lovely lot from Hartnell Avenue in Fresh Meat (Channel 4, Tuesday, 10pm).

Back for its second series, it has a real feel of the rom-com about it, with likeable characters who quite clearly try to make out they know everything about everything but, obviously, don’t.

All the cast were pretty much as we left them. I wasn’t keen on Kingsley’s dodgy-looking goatee but his relationship with Kimberley Nixon’s Josie was still on-off, Vod was still scrounging, and JP was still … well, Jack Whitehall, who seems to play the same character in every show he’s in.

Nevertheless, the meat certainly hasn’t started rotting.

How refreshing to watch a comedy that actually makes me laugh.

And what a lovely welcome return to business in Strictly Come Dancing (BBC One, Saturday, 6.30pm) with the very first look into exactly how good the pairings are together. And what a lovely surprise that the funky chunky one (Lisa Riley) who always, in her words, gets to play “mingers and slappers”, triumphed at the top of the leader board.

She cha cha cha’d her way past the likes of Victoria Pendleton and Denise Van Outen and I can’t wait to see more of her bubbly vitality. Who needs to be slim like a beauty queen when you’ve got dancing feet like that?